Back from a short blogging break
Sorry for my recent silence on the blog - a combination of lots of travel (tomorrow will be my second full weekend in Utah since moving here three months ago) and the usual start-up madness has caused a need for an occasional (and healthy) break from blogging.
Matt Asay's post has motivated me to push one short blog post of my own where he shared thoughts after the first day of a two-day Advisory Group session we're having here at Bungee Labs. Matt pointed out this blog post by eBay's Curtis Gavin where Curtis describes how we meet up with some members of the eBay web services team at the eBay Developer Conference a couple of weeks ago:
"A fun thing happened while I and a couple colleagues were waiting for our next blogging/video taping gig. We stopped by the BungeeLabs booth to check out their web-based on-demand development environment, Bungee Connect. We heard it was cool, so wanted to see what it was all about.
...My colleagues and I suggested they try our new eBay Shopping Web Services. The smaller WSDL and faster, more responsive APIs seemed like a good fit for demo'ing. They were up for the challenge.
...Start to finish, this all took less than 20 minutes. Not bad for working with a new API. And, as Brad pointed out, we never left the web browser!"
It turns out we were the first non-eBayers to try to develop a sample app using the newly launched eBay Shopping Web Services WSDL - and Brad Hintze (our marketing manager) did this in a snap - most of the 20 minutes involved locating the correct URL.
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Well there you have it...Nothing earth-shattering I know. My first blog post after a break is always hard work...a kind of "blogger's-block" sets in - the longer I wait, the harder I find it to break the silence...believe it or not I actually get nervous when writing my first blog post after a break...weird. Hopefully I can get back to blogging regularly now.
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Update - noticed another post by Matt discussing a point that came up during our Advisory Group session yesterday:
"Cornelius said something that I found brilliant. In terms of developing community, Cornelius suggested that
You have the make the community visible to itself.
In other words, a developer is much more likely to stay with a community if she actually feels like she's not alone.
...One of the primary factors in a community's staying power is the ability of the participants to actually participate meaningfully with others in that community. This seems obvious, but it's surprising at how few companies actually get this right. Most "communities" bowl alone. You go into a project's forum to consume an application or information, and then you leave to go do your real work. For a community to succeed, the "real work" needs to happen on-site, in the community. It's not something you access and then leave to be productive. The productivity has to come while in the midst of the community."
The "Cornelius" mentioned is Cornelius Willis, Microsoft's first Director of Platform Marketing (in the mid-90's) and more recently VP SourceLabs. Cornelius is one of 6 (including Matt) hugely experienced advisors we're lucky enough to have access to as we navigate this early phase of Bungee Lab's public life.